One of the most important limited resources in RimWorld, steel can make or break your playthrough if you abuse it.
Steel will be used in abundance to build some of the most important workshops and items in the game (such as the spaceship).
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This is why you need to get your hands on RimWorld steel as fast as you can and not waste it on useless things.
Here is how you can get steel in RimWorld using some of the game’s core mechanics.
Table of contents
Getting Steel in RimWorld
The first thing we should get straight is that steel is a limited resource. You should never waste it! Don’t build steel walls, steel chairs, steel-whatever that is not necessary for the long run.
There are a few methods that you can use to get your hands on some steel in RimWorld:
- Mine Compacted steel
- Salvage
- Smelt
- Drill
- Buy
Mining RimWorld’s Compacted Steel
This is the way that most of us will get steel in RimWorld for our first playthrough. There are various rocks/mountains that you can dig into that will give you steel when mined.
These rocks are called “Compacted Steel”, and you can see some of them in the picture at the top of the article. You can see if they are the right ones by just clicking on them and looking at the bottom left corner of the screen.
All you have to do to get steel by mining in RimWorld is to:
- Open the Orders menu.
- Select the Mine option.
- Click (or drag) over the tiles you want to mine (the ones that are Compacted steel).
- Wait.
After a while, if you have someone that is tasked with mining, they will go and slowly destroy the tiles. When they finally disappear, steel will appear in their stead.
Depending on the region you chose at the beginning of the game, you will either have mountains everywhere, which will result in a lot of steel, or almost no mountains, which means no steel from mining.
Don’t worry if you find yourself in the desert. There are still ways to get steel besides mining.
Salvage various RimWorld steel items
This is the best way to get steel in the early game, as it doesn’t require as much effort as mining, and it also clears some space for your expansion.
There are many ruins on all RimWorld map seeds. In every start that you will get, there will be at least two ruins with steel walls, floors, vases, and so on.
What you can do to get a lot of steel is to salvage these steel items to get their resources and use them for something more practical.
This method is straightforward since if you find a steel wall anywhere, there will be steel floors as well, which you should destroy. Sometimes even normal marble ruins have steel vases and sarcophagi.
Smelt Steel slag chunks
Once you’ve learned how electricity works, you can build yourself an electric smelter that will be able to get rid of those steel slag chunks you’ve been collecting for a while.
To build the smelter, you will need 170x Steel and 2x Components. Once it is built, you can smelt Steel slag chunks for 15x Steel a piece.
You can get some steel slag chunks by destroying various steel objects, such as the drop pods that the raiders use to attack you.
Underground Drilling
This is a method that you can only use in the mid to late game, but deep drilling is an excellent way to get your hands on some steel in RimWorld.
You just need to find the location of a steel deposit underground with the use of a ground-penetrating scanner and then position the deep drill on top of it.
You will also need to connect the drill to electricity and use a pawn to actually operate it. It won’t work by itself.
Buy steel from traders in RimWorld
There is also always the choice to just buy steel to get it. Steel is a common resource for most traders, so just check in with them when they visit your colony.
That’s everything you need to know about how to get steel in RimWorld!
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